Minuteman
by Alankria
Summary: Oneshot. Slippy's thoughts as the Great Fox drifts in space towards its destination with almost no power and the other three team members unconscious. Not Slippy's POV.


Disclaimer: Slippy Toad, ROB, Fox McCloud, Falco Lombardi and Peppy Hare, and all related concepts, are copyright Nintendo.

This isn't so much A/U as a stand-alone piece. If it was to be placed in the regular timeline, I guess it'd be before the Lylat Wars or in their early days. This was originally going to be the first chapter of a story, but I wrote this and promptly forgot what would happen in the rest of the story. This has been sitting on my laptop since April 2003 so I figured I should just post it.

-

**Minuteman**

**by Chibialandra**

"ROB, remind me what our ETA is?" Slippy asked drowsily, trying to lean up onto his elbow but only succeeding in knocking Falco's mug onto the floor.

"Forty-three minutes," the robot replied in its regular monotonous tone.

"And how long will the others survive with this little oxygen?"

Even ROB was aware that this was not going to be an easy thing for Slippy to accept. "Approximately forty minutes."

Slippy glanced around him. Peppy had been the first to pass out, collapsing off his chair and lying motionless on the floor. Fox had managed to roll him into the recovery position before passing out himself- he had only survived that little bit longer because he was slightly fitter. He had curled up into a small ball, pressed against Peppy's side to hold him in place. Falco had been next, surviving ten minutes longer than the mammals because somewhere along the evolutionary chain birds had been granted the need for less oxygen. Probably because they, especially birds of prey like Falco, needed to be able to fly very high where the air was thinner. Falco couldn't do that, but evolution was still useful. He had passed out about five minutes ago, leaving Slippy. Sometimes it helped being amphibian; because he could survive underwater for several days, he didn't need as much oxygen per breath to survive.

It had happened about forty hours ago. The Great Fox was returning from a mission to a far away planet, and something had gone wrong in the Stream. The Stream wasn't the best way to travel faster than light- it was the only way. It tore apart the fabric of space, and sometimes it went wrong. But for StarFox, it went wrong about forty hours drifting time away from the nearest space station, and they had very low oxygen supplies because their mission had been to a place with no oxygen. The ship could recycle air, but the energy it took to recycle cut out the energy used for speed. The StreamTearer was bust, the crystals needed to be replaced, the whole engine was fucked; they couldn't do anything but fire off the one remaining rocket every now and then. Slippy had rerouted almost everything to engines, including temperature (they were all wearing all their clothes to keep warm), and then at Fox's insistence he had cut oxygen down.

He glanced at Fox's unconscious form. The youth looked peaceful, almost content as he snuggled against Peppy's chest. Falco had been lying on the floor anyway, resting his head on his hands; when he passed out, Slippy had just made sure his head was titled back to his airways wouldn't block up. Fox and Peppy had been the competent first-aiders; Falco and Slippy knew almost nothing.

"ROB," Slippy said, "can you compute, taking into account the minimal oxygen needed for the others to survive, the shortest possible time it will take us to reach that space station."

"Computing… I can reroute more recycling energy to engines, meaning we will arrive in thirty-five minutes."

"Great. Do it."

"If I do, Fox and Peppy will definitely become comatose, and Falco probably will become comatose as well."

Slippy glanced at his unconscious friends.

"And what will be their survival chances?"

"For Peppy it will be 78%, for Fox it will be 84% and for Falco it will be 96%."

Slippy sank his head into his hands. "Great," he muttered. "So they can be dead for three minutes if we continue at our present speed, or they'll slip into comas and might die." He sighed. "Isn't there anything else in the medibay that will help?"

"You've used up every single oxygen tank in the Great Fox," ROB replied.

When Fox and Peppy had first started feeling woozy, Falco had come up with the idea of using the small oxygen tank kept under the seat of his fighter jet. And, as the others all had the same tank, there were four. There were also a few more tanks scattered around the ship. They had helped for a while, but still hadn't stopped the inevitable.

The fact that the last mission had resulted in a quick escape from an extremely pissed off native didn't help, because their communications had all been shot by the enemy. Slippy suspected that that chase, and the way Fox had handled the Great Fox as if it was a fighter jet, had something to do with the engine failure as well. The commlinks in the jets just weren't good enough to reach the station.

"ROB," he said absently, a few minutes later, "will I pass out?"

"Unlikely."

"I feel awful."

"Would you like me to alter the energy direction?"

Slippy looked at his friends, imagined how he'd feel if they didn't wake up from the coma. And then he thought that they'd be dead for sure if he did nothing. "Okay," he said feebly.

…"Changes complete."

He could actually feel the next dip in oxygen and glanced at Fox and Peppy. Their breathing shallowed again. Falco's did as well. "They're dying," Slippy mumbled.

"They are still alive."

"There's gotta be something I can do."

"Sometimes you must accept the inevitable."

"That's rather profound for a semi AI, ROB," Slippy said. "No offence."

"When I was programmed, I was designed to be much more than a basic semi AI without being a full AI."

"Yeah, I bet James couldn't afford the AI license."

"Exactly."

"Are you sure there are no ships in the area?"

"My sensors are half blown from that chase, and besides, you've been sending a constant distress signal from Fox's jet."

One of Fox's ideas soon before he passed out. His jet was attached to the hull of the Great Fox beaming a distress signal. Even though they couldn't see anyone, Fox insisted that they try. After all, someone could be in cloak. Falco had been quick to point out that someone in cloak probably wouldn't rush to help a group of underpaid mercenaries who had probably pissed them off at some point, but he agreed that they might as well try.

Slippy glanced at the ceiling. They were sitting in the bridge because it had the best oxygen filter, and Falco had pulled in a table so they could play cards and have a last drink before they passed out. No one had really had the passion, especially when the temperature dropped to minus twenty centigrade, the coldest that ROB allowed, and they were all shivering slightly. Even now Slippy could see that Fox and Peppy's fur was standing slightly on end, and Falco's feathers had gone a little puffy.

"Fuck this," Slippy murmured. "Lower the temperature to minus fifty. I'd rather they all got hypothermia than went into a coma."

"They would probably go into a hypothermic coma," ROB said, "and that's far more dangerous."

"I'll go get the thermal blankets, and I'll drag Falco around so he's lying next to the other two."

"If I drop the temperature to minus fifty, you will also suffer. You may be cold blooded but you're not optimised for such cold temperatures."

"Just do it, ROB. We need the extra energy for oxygen."

"Very well."

The medibay was not far away but it felt far further. The rest of the ship was already minus one hundred and when Slippy stepped back onto the bridge it felt like tropical summer. He was actually sweating. "S-s-see," he stuttered, "d-d-don't mind the c-c-cold."

"You have the initial signs of going into hibernation. Save one blanket for yourself." Slippy shrugged acceptance, because he had to admit he was feeling pretty cold and sluggish. He dragged Falco around so that he was lying on the other side of Peppy. He left Fox curled up because ROB said it was actually good for him, and draped the other five blankets over the three of them. He turned the blankets on and hoped that the batteries had all been recharged since Fox got hypothermia several months previously. Then he wrapped the sixth blanket around his shoulders and lay, half curled, on the floor next to the others.

Time seemed to pass in a dim haze. He was aware of the temperature plummeting, and vaguely asked for ROB to drop it a little more. The others hadn't gone comatose yet, although they were all beginning to develop hypothermia, and ROB was getting worried that although they weren't comatose their brains were still suffering from a lack of oxygen.

"Not long," Slippy mumbled.

He felt his eyes drooping closed and knew that his body's own survival mechanisms were kicking in. Slowing down his whole body to keep just enough oxygen flowing around, and producing as much body heat as a cold-blooded person can. His mind began to wander, and he thought of the look on Falco's face when Fox had passed out. The look had lasted less than a second, but Slippy couldn't shake it from his head.

Falco had been scared. That was definitely something Slippy hadn't thought Falco could be. Wary, yes. Anxious, yes. Fear… yes, now that Slippy had seen that look. Falco was frightened that he would pass out soon, and when he eventually did, Slippy had actually prayed. Until then a convinced atheist, he had realised he didn't so much not believe in God as not care whether or not God existed. So he had asked God, if he existed, to help his friends survive. He also asked God not to tell the others that he had prayed, because he'd feel a little foolish. Falco would rinse him for the rest of eternity.

'Dem it', he thought, 'I don't care if Falco rinses me for eternity. I just want him to be alive to do the rinsing.'

The minutes ticked slowly by, Slippy watching them pass as if it was some kind of obsession. In a way, it was. Just like he listened to the breathing of the other three, to make sure it didn't change too drastically.

Twenty minutes.

He felt so damn helpless. Watching the minutes and listening to their breathing. Couldn't he do something to help? But there was nothing to do but think.

Nineteen minutes.

He opened one eye. All he could see was the top of Fox's head. Orangey-brown fur, the white stripe between his ears, the black bits on the tips of his ears, the small pizza-like slice out of his left ear, where someone in some fight that Fox had never spoken about had thought it would be funny to start cutting up his ears. If Fox was the only one awake, wouldn't he do something? He always did something. When Peppy was still bleeding to death after getting shot by an android, almost dead and certainly going to die, Fox, who was barely conscious from his own bloodloss, had opened up his arm and given Peppy enough blood that he, Fox, slipped into a coma for forty hours. The image was still fresh- Peppy lying motionless with a machine compressing the huge gash in his chest closed whilst the healing gel sealed the wound; Fox draped over him, his blood pumping along the plastic pipe and into Peppy's arm, just as motionless. Falco had had to be sedated because he was trying to stop Fox, but Fox was universal donor and Falco wasn't, and his blood wasn't combatable with Peppy's. And Slippy, being cold-blooded, definitely couldn't donate blood to a mammal. It was the way Fox had sacrificed himself without so much as a selfish thought that stuck with Slippy. Would he have done the same had he been able? He hoped so.

Eighteen minutes.

Fox had saved his life several times, but there was one time that Slippy had never forgotten. The team had been given what was supposed to be so easy a mission, that only Fox and Slippy had gone into the base. Falco waited nearby, to cover their escape in case there was any trouble, and Peppy waited in the getaway shuttle. Fox and Slippy were supposed to make their way through the virtually deserted, small base to the central control room, which would be deserted, and download anything saved onto the computer's hard drive. Their client had been awfully mysterious about what they were actually downloading, but they accepted that. Most the time they didn't actually want to know what their client wanted the data for- let them sleep easy at night. This mission started off as easy as it was meant to, and Fox and Slippy weren't stopped as they walked through the base to the central room. They even managed to download the information, but it was about then that the twenty people in the base woke up and decided to stop the intruders. Until that point, Slippy had never had to run for his life. Normally he didn't get thrown into the thick of things, but Fox wanted him to come inside in case there were any technical problems with the downloading. And it was gonna be an easy mission, right? Not really. The twenty people managed to trap Fox and Slippy inside a storage room, and just as they blew a hole in the wall with Fox's grenades, they were attacked by their hosts. Fox had thrust the discs into Slippy's hands and told him to run (the storage room had been against the outside wall). Slippy had run to the nearby tree line and, as he glanced back through the scrub, saw Fox run after him. So he kept running. The next time he looked back, he saw that the people in the base were throwing grenades. Just as one would have hit him, and probably killed him, Fox launched himself into the air and batted the grenade away. Slippy had had to carry Fox the rest of the way back- he had passed out from the shock of losing two fingers to the grenade. 'Two fingers for my life' Slippy thought. 'Would I have done that for him?'

Seventeen Minutes.

He could remember how he had come to meet Fox. He had been working as a mechanic for a few mercenaries on a space station in the asteroid field when Peppy had needed his Arwing repaired. Peppy was, at that time, a wandering mercenary, still emotionally scarred by what had happened to James McCloud several years previously. But he had a mission. Find James' son. When James and Peppy were on Venom, Pigma had arranged for Fox to be kidnapped and tortured in front of James. And when Peppy finally came to escape, he couldn't find the boy anywhere. But he had promised James that he would find Fox, and he wasn't going to go back on a promise to a dead man. For four years he had thought that Fox was dead, and that was that, until he heard rumours of a young mercenary with unnatural piloting skills whose shooting skills were better than his grammar. He definitely suspected it was Fox when he heard that the boy was a red fox with a white stripe on his head, and he was dead sure when someone mentioned that the boy had bright green eyes. Peppy had come to the asteroid field to meet a contact, who knew where the boy was-only because he was a bounty hunter and the boy had a nice bounty on his head courtesy of another pissed off mercenary. The bounty hunter was happy to be paid off by Peppy, and when Peppy paid him extra to help him find Fox, it seemed like his lucky day. But neither the bounty hunter nor Peppy had impressive technical skills, and Peppy happily paid Slippy to give them a hand breaking into the place were Fox was supposedly being held captive by yet another pissed off mercenary. Slippy could still remember breaking into the compound, he still remembered the way that Peppy managed to hold the three person team together. Mostly he remembered finding Fox, who was very pissed off, in chains in the bottom of the compound. They rescued Fox, who said he couldn't care less about Peppy's sentimental attachment but was glad for the rescue. When the four of them tried to leave the compound, they had a slightly harder time, and when they finally made it out, Peppy suggested that they should work together more often. 'And to think,' Slippy mused, 'if Peppy hadn't shown up, Falco would have broken into the compound alone and killed Fox whilst he was helpless in chains, taken the bounty and not lost a second's sleep. Falco's definitely changed for the better over the past two years. Fox too. And I've managed to make some very good friends.'

Sixteen Minutes.

He hadn't really classed himself as a mercenary before Peppy decided that they ought to become a team. He'd been a mechanic working for mercenaries. He still wondered when he should call his parents and tell them what he was doing. They'd probably go mental, even though they hadn't really cared much about him when he was around. As soon as he could quit school at the age of sixteen, he had, and he had taken his home learned mechanic skills and put them to use in an apprenticeship. But that got boring quickly, and a friend at work suggested that he go work up on the asteroid field base. The mercenaries wouldn't care that he wasn't qualified as soon as they saw that he was better than most qualified mechanics. Simple as. 'The last few years have been crazy,' Slippy thought absently. 'Leaving home, working for the mercenaries, then actually becoming a mercenary.' He had been the team's mechanic until Fox taught him how to fly a fighter jet, and from then on he had been able to play an active part in as many missions as he wanted.

Fifteen Minutes.

The oxygen was getting ever thinner, Slippy was sure, and the others' breathing was laboured. His own breathing was incredibly shallow, almost as shallow as theirs, but he was still conscious. Just about. But you only saw flashes from your past when you were gonna die, right? He didn't like these bits and pieces from the past few years, he didn't like the way it became harder and harder to open his eyes.

Fourteen Minutes.

Not long now.

Thirteen Minutes.

Counting the minutes.

Twelve Minutes.

Our signal should reach the base soon. ROB'll be given instant clearance to dock, considering our condition.

Eleven Minutes.

It's awful dark in here. I thought ROB left some lighting on.

Ten Minutes.

He's talking now. Can't hear what he's saying. The others are still breathing. They better stay that way. I don't think I'd be able to perform CPR on them in this condition. Can't actually move anything, even my eyelids.

Nine Minutes.

It's cold too. Space is almost absolute zero, this is nowhere near that. But it still feels cold, even to me. I bet I go into hibernation. Takes the piss, really. Being cold-blooded but not being able to be conscious through the cold.

Eight Minutes.

Sudden judder. They've grabbed us with a tractor beam. Good. That means we'll be inside within a minute or two. Hold on guys, not long now.


End file.
